canonical: https://jentic.com/apis/company-information.service.gov.uk/company-information-service

# Company Information Service UK Companies House Public Data API

The UK Companies House Public Data API provides read access to the United Kingdom's official company register: it searches companies, officers, and disqualified directors, and returns company profiles, officers, filing history, charges, and persons with significant control. Use it to look up and monitor UK company data from the statutory source.

## For AI agents

Search the UK company register and retrieve company profiles, officers, filing history, charges, and persons with significant control from Companies House.

## Scope

Does not file documents, incorporate companies, or return data beyond the public register. Use for reading Companies House company, officer, filing, charge, and control data only.

## Capabilities

- Search companies, officers, and disqualified officers across the register
- Retrieve a company profile by its company number
- List a company's current and past officers
- Read a company's filing history and registered charges
- List the persons with significant control over a company

## Use cases

### AI agent company due diligence

An AI agent runs a know-your-business check by searching for a company, pulling its profile, and listing its officers and persons with significant control. Through Jentic the agent finds these read operations by intent and calls them with the stored key, without hand-encoding the Authorization header.

Example prompt: Look up the company by number 12345678 and return its status, officers, and persons with significant control

### Register monitoring

A compliance workflow watches a list of companies and re-reads their filing history to detect new filings such as accounts or officer changes. The API returns the filing history for each company so a monitor can flag material updates on a schedule.

Example prompt: Read the filing history for each company on a watchlist and report any new filings

### Officer and control lookup

An onboarding process resolves the directors and beneficial owners behind a customer company by listing its officers and persons with significant control. The API returns both so the process can screen the individuals in charge before approving an account.

Example prompt: List the officers and persons with significant control for a given company number

## Key endpoints

| Method | Path | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| GET | `/search` | Search all Companies House records |
| GET | `/company/{companyNumber}` | Get a company profile |
| GET | `/company/{company_number}/officers` | List company officers |
| GET | `/company/{company_number}/filing-history` | Get company filing history |
| GET | `/company/{company_number}/charges` | List company charges |
| GET | `/company/{company_number}/persons-with-significant-control` | List persons with significant control |

## Key resources

- **Search** — Search companies, officers, and disqualified officers across the register
- **Company profile** — Retrieve a company profile, filing history, and registered charges by company number
- **Officers and control** — List a company's officers and its persons with significant control

## Why Jentic

- **Setup:** Querying the Companies House API by hand means base64-encoding your API key into the Authorization header, paging through search results, and handling the mix of company-number path formats. Through Jentic you install once, import Companies House from the API Directory, store the key once, and your agent calls it.
- **Permission scoping:** Every Companies House operation is a read, and the company number sits in the URL path, so a rule can pin your agent to one company or to search-only access. You choose the operations it may call, so the agent only reads the register data you allow.
- **Credential handling:** Your Companies House API key is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and injected into the Authorization header at request time. It never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context.
- **Discovery method:** Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'look up a company' or 'list a company's officers', and Jentic returns the matching Companies House operation with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without reading the API docs.

## Related APIs

- **PeopleFinders Pro** — People search and background lookup API.
- **Exa Search** — Neural web search and content retrieval API.
- **USA.gov** — Official directory of U.S. government agencies, services, and contact data.

## FAQ

### Is there a UK Companies House MCP server?

You don't need an MCP server to connect your agent to the UK Companies House API. Jentic connects it directly from the API Directory: import Companies House, store your API key once, and your agent searches companies and reads officers on demand.

### Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the Companies House API?

Yes. Because every operation is read-only, you can allow your agent just the search and company-profile lookups and leave the officer or filing endpoints out. The company number sits in the URL path, so you can even scope it to a single company, and every call the agent makes is logged.

### What authentication does the UK Companies House API use?

The Companies House API authenticates with an API key sent in the Authorization header, per its OpenAPI spec. Through Jentic the key is stored once by your self-hosted instance and injected at call time, so it never reaches the agent's context.

### Can I look up a company's directors with the Companies House API?

Yes. Retrieve the company by its company number, then list its officers to get current and resigned directors and secretaries. You can also list the persons with significant control to see the beneficial owners.

### What are the rate limits for the UK Companies House API?

The OpenAPI spec does not specify rate limits. Companies House applies a per-key request limit over a rolling window, so check your registered application's limits before running bulk lookups.

### How do I connect the UK Companies House API to my AI agent?

Search the Jentic API Directory for the Companies House operation you need, such as looking up a company, and import it. To run it on your own infrastructure, install Jentic One from its GitHub repo, then your agent calls the API with your API key injected at execution time.